Headley's book also provides a much richer telling of the now-infamous "Bohemian Rhapsody" incident that the St. Petersburg Times series revealed, and which illustrates Miscavige's harsh notions of church management. Unhappy with a variety of matters involving staffing and, more specifically, with problems at a music studio, Miscavige, Headley writes, happily hit on a way to show his employees that he meant business: he had chairs arranged in a large circle for about 70 executives in a large room. Then he explained that they would begin playing a game of "musical chairs," and he chose Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" for it. Each round, one chair would be taken away, and one person would find themselves without a seat. The last person remaining would stay at the base and would help Miscavige fill the positions vacated by the others -- because everyone else would be shipped out, that night, to the worst, most remote Scientology postings on the globe.
Headley vividly describes the desperate flailing, the wailing, the tears, as grown men and women fought over chairs to keep themselves from being shipped that night to places far away with the likelihood that they would never see their spouses or children ever again. When it was over, and people were openly weeping, they waited to be transported -- and then learned that Miscavige was sending no one anywhere.
